No New Windows Till 2006? Office System and Security Pushes To Occupy Microsoft Until "Longhorn" Eric Grevstad
Mon 10/13/03 -- We wrote in March that Windows users shouldn't expect a new operating system -- the ballyhooed "Longhorn" successor to Microsoft's current desktop and notebook platform, Windows XP -- until late 2004 or probably 2005. Based on several statements at last week's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft's now admitting we won't see Longhorn's new, 3D-eye-candy interface, or its WinFS file system that seamlessly bridges local, network, and Internet storage, until 2006.
If by some wild chance Longhorn slips from spring to fall of '06, that'll be five years since Windows XP debuted -- a long time to go between upgrades, particularly with open-source upstart Linux getting less geeky and more polished (though still comparatively short on applications) with new releases or distributions every few months. Nor does there seem to be any buzz about in-between releases: Windows XP Service Pack 2 is expected in mid-2004, but is expected to emphasize bug fixes and beefed-up security rather than radical new features (see below).
So what's Microsoft got up its sleeve for the short term? WinPlanet's online poking around suggests three priorities, presented in 100-percent unofficial, unscientific crystal-ball fashion here.
1: Win XP Vanilla, Win XP Twist, Win XP Wild Cherry Fusion
In July 2002, Microsoft released Windows XP Media Center Edition, a version of Win XP Professional for specially equipped DVD-viewing and personal-video-recording PCs. As we reported last week, PC manufacturers have released a second batch of such systems, and Microsoft's issued an upgraded Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 with new features such as FM radio as well as TV integration and remote-controlled copying of an audio CD to the computer's hard disk.
In addition to continuing this push for living-room PCs, hoping to get consumers to view their computers as home entertainment and digital photography and video centers instead of den- or family-room homework and Web stations, Microsoft is likely to team up with hardware partners on a similar second wave of pen-friendly Tablet PCs and second release of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition.
The not-so-secret hope is that, though pen input for forms, sketching, and the note-scribbling of Windows Journal arguably failed to yield a "killer app," the new OneNote component of Microsoft Office 2003 will hit the jackpot, as users capture ideas and information that isn't yet ready for formal Word or Excel format. Looking ahead, Microsoft seems keen on expanding the concept of different flavors or versions of Windows for different hardware, instead of a one-size-fits-all operating system. And stay tuned for a possible consumer push for Windows XP 64-Bit Edition if AMD's Athlon 64 or a new, affordable cousin of Intel's Itanium CPU makes a splash in the mainstream market.
2. Office System Everything
We're just eight days away from the launch of Office 2003 -- and a blitz of brainwashing to make business users think about all their work in terms of the renamed Microsoft Office System instead of the old-fashioned Microsoft Office suite. Make no mistake -- Microsoft wants everyone using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to start using Windows SharePoint Services (the server platform for Web portals enabling online meetings and document collaboration), Office InfoPath 2003 (a front-end forms program for collecting XML data to be distributed across the enterprise), Exchange Server, and other tools as well.
Microsoft productivity and business services VP Jeff Raikes said at last week's partner conference that the market for Office System solutions will grow to an estimated $117 billion by 2006, with XML-based Web services and tools to help bring sales, human resources, and other departments' operations under the familiar framework of the Word/Excel/Outlook interface. Templates and components such as the new Microsoft Office Solution Accelerators will be key.
Today, the software giant unveiled Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System -- a $499 toolkit that helps Office add-in developers step up from Visual Basic for Applications to the more potent world of Visual Studio .Net 2003 and the Microsoft .Net Framework. Indeed, Microsoft's strongest weapon for getting the millions of Windows 95/98/Me/NT holdouts to upgrade may not be Windows XP so much as Office 2003 (which will only run on Win XP or Win 2000 with an up-to-date Service Pack) and its all-out push for uniting Microsoft-only clients, servers, workgroups, documents, and data across the enterprise via Microsoft's version of XML.
3. A Thing of Shreds and Patches
At last week's conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said flatly that the past two years' "crisis" in security, with a different Windows, Outlook, or Internet Explorer leak, worm, or virus seeming to grab headlines and plague users almost every week, had rocked the company just as much as Bill Gates's famous 1995 belated embrace of the Internet or the U.S. Government's antitrust prosecution had.
Microsoft insists that most of the attacks would have been prevented if only customers had kept up with recommended security fixes and patches, and that the quality of its products is improving -- Ballmer claims that four critical vulnerabilities turned up during Windows Server 2003's first 150 days on the market, versus 43 for Linux rival Red Hat 9. But the software giant admits it can do a lot better, so it's promising a complete revamp of the patching experience -- across Windows 2000 and later products -- by May of 2004.
According to Ballmer, this will include both higher-quality patches and a rollback or uninstall capability, to combat the embarrassment of bug fixes that prove buggy; quicker downloads, with patch sizes decreased by 30 to 80 percent; patches that require fewer reboots and less downtime; and a superset of today's Windows Update, called Microsoft Update, that will provide a unified Web location for "all of the patches for all of the Microsoft products." Larger, server-based businesses will be able to apply an automated patch downloader and deployer called Software Update Services 2.0. And except for emergencies, Microsoft will trim its "patch of the day" security scramble to no more than monthly patch releases.
Beyond that, Windows XP Service Pack 2 -- which Ballmer described as "a service pack on steroids" -- will focus "very much on the security issues," with fixes ranging from improved e-mail and instant-message filtering to more rigorous memory management and blocking or sandboxing of code from Web sites not specifically designated as trustworthy, as well as "perimeter inspection" to stop, say, a notebook that's become infected elsewhere from passing germs along when it rejoins a virtual private network.
Are security fixes and Office integration and collaboration as exciting as brand-new operating systems and interfaces? No. But they're Microsoft's way of keeping Windows users satisfied -- and, it hopes, keeping them from straying -- until Longhorn reinvents the PC in 2006.
